How it works

Focused on your customers

The Customer Centric Index is a survey specifically designed to understand what customers want you to
improve on your website / app. You will be able to compare your performance against your peers /
competitors.

400,000 customers have taken the Customer Centric Index in more than thirty languages for organizations such as Cisco, Microsoft and The European Union.

Unique survey method

In traditional customer satisfaction surveys for websites or apps, customers are asked questions like this.

How do most people answer a question like the above?
It's so vague that many either say they don't know or will mark a 4, 5 or 6.

The Customer Centric Index is different. It only asks customers to identify the factors that matter most to them when dealing with you online. It's a unique survey method that has been developed as a result of 10 years of research and extensive testing. It has identified 13 factors that affect customer experience online. It presents them in a unique survey format that was discovered by Gerry McGovern. The customer is presented with a list as follows:

Fast to do things

Has ratings, reviews, recommendations

Poor search results

Confusing menus and links

Hard to contact a person

Gives me the facts / transparent

Hard to participate / give feedback

Looks attractive / appealing

Inaccurate information

Easy to contact a person

Easy to participate / give feedback

Full of jargon, corporate speak

Plain language

Out-of-date information

Complete information

Simple layout / easy to read

Has no ratings, reviews, recommendations

Cluttered layout / hard to read

Looks unattractive / un appealing

Slow to do things

Incomplete information

Helpful search results

Clear menus and links

Accurate information

Up-to-date information

Misleading, not transparent

The customer is asked to select the three factors that matter most to them. This has the following advantages:

Because of its unusual design, it almost overloads the customer
forcing them to trust their gut instinct and choose only what matters most to them.

It's really fast. Your customers can do it in less than 1 minute.

It clearly identifies what your customers really care about.

It clearly identifies what they don't care about.

Here's an example of the type of data you get.

Factor

Detractors

Promoters

Take Action

Content

Up-to-date

1.6 %

7.6 %

3

Accurate

1.8 %

10.6 %

3

Complete

3.9 %

6.7 %

12

Language

0.9 %

4.8 %

2

Ease-Of-Use

Contact

5 %

3.5 %

16

Feedback

0.9 %

2 %

2

Transparency

0 %

3.7 %

0

Ratings

0.5 %

0.4 %

2

Social

Search

5 %

3.5 %

16

Menus & links

6.7 %

12.4 %

20

Layout

6 %

3.4 %

20

Look & feel

1.2 %

4.3 %

3

Speed

0.7 %

2.8 %

2

Customer Centric Index

34%

66%

100%

Promoters: 66% of the votes were for positive experience statements, such as “accurate information” and “easy to participate / give feedback.”Detractors: 34% of the votes were for negative experience factors.Take Action: Tells you the most and least important factors to your customers.How Take Action is calculated

13 customer experience factors

Extensive research and testing have identified the following factors as key to the online customer experience.

Content factors

Accurate: Accurate content is the foundation upon which all quality websites and apps must be built. Without accuracy there can be no trust.

Up-to-date: If your website or app is not up to date, then you will waste your customer's time. Waste their time and they won't come back.

Complete: Leave your customers hanging at the end of a process, leave out the last vital link, forget to explain the process fully–you will leave them frustrated and annoyed.

Language: If you use jargon, you alienate your customers. Expect your customers to adapt to your language to describe their needs? Not a chance! On the Web, complex language is an experience destroyer.

Social factors

Contact: Can you be easily contacted? Is it obvious to your customers how they can do this? Difficulty in contacting the right person is a big irritation for customers.

Participation: It's important to encourage customers to participate in communities and discussions, and to give feedback.

Open: Nothing creates a bad customer experience faster than a sense that you are not being open and transparent.

Recommendations: Customers love to compare, rate and review. They like to get recommendations from other customers.

Design factors

Search: For many customers, search is the first step in their task. Poor search results are a major problem for them.

Navigation: Does your website or app suffer from confusing menus and links? Over the years, we have found that this is the number one factor that negatively affects the customer experience.

Layout: Customers hate cluttered layouts. It makes it harder to read and find things. Do your customers think you have a simple, easy-to-read layout?

Visual appeal: Surprisingly, visual appeal is much less important to customers than most organizations think it is.

Speed: Slow speeds absolutely kill the customer experience. It's not simply about slow-downloading pages. Do your forms take ages to fill in? Do your processes have too many steps?

These factors are fixed and cannot be changed so as to allow like-for-like comparison with other organizations.